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Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

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Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#851

Post by the_gipsy »

scarface74 wrote: post #827
the_gipsy wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 30% includes any kind of subscriptions or payment tied to the user account.

Seeing that most major subscription services on the App Store are already forcing users to subscribe outside of the App Store, Apple isn’t getting a cut of subscriptions from the most popular service. How many apps require a subscription and cannot be a web app because of limitations of Safari? How many paid apps would be websites if it weren’t for limitations of Safari?

The moment you offer in-app payment, apple gets a cut. This goes as far as not allowing apps that link to payment outside of the appstore's payment system.

There is a huge number of cordova apps out there. These are webapps inside a native wrapper, to access exactly those features that are crippled in safari. Reliable storage, push notifications, and not much more.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#852

Post by Karunamon »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #734
Karunamon wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misconception. 1. Apple is not a monopoly player in the app market. 2. Microsoft's antitrust fine was for forcing OEMs to not include any competing browsers (Netscape) on threat of losing special pricing.

> 1. Apple is not a monopoly player in the app market. Apple has a 100% monopoly in the app market by running the only AppStore available for iOS devices, and that store review guidelines specifically prohibits use of any other web rendering engine but WebKit [1] > 2. Microsoft's antitrust fine was for forcing OEMs to not include any competing browsers (Netscape) on threat of losing special pricing. That's not the on…

The critical bit here is "for iOS devices". The legal definition of monopoly is interested in the broader market, not what the manufacturer of a device with comparatively tiny market share does.

iOS with a 13.4% global market share as of 2019 does not even come close to monopolist status. While I'd like to see iOS forced open as well, there is currently no legal method to do so.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#853

Post by davvolun »

diggan wrote: post #835
vbezhenar wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please consider contributing to MDN. It's the best source for web development and it would be great to keep everything there, properly cross-referenced, etc.

Heh, you're asking a googler who's basically responsible for some of the actions Google is taking with Chrome, trying to make the web only browseable via Chrome and centralizing information under their own Google brand, to contribute to a cross-company/community effort (Mozilla + Microsoft + open source hackers)? While noble, I can only wish you good luck. I think the sail has long sailed for asking Chrome/Google to…

Just want to note that you specifically mentioned Microsoft working with open source hackers in this comment saying that the ship has long since sailed on Chrome/Google contributing to the open web.

I don't know, never say never I guess. I'm certainly not going to defend Google's track record on openness and privacy -- there have been, under even the most generous of interpretations, huge missteps, and I don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt -- but they do contribute. Edge backed by Chromium?

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#854

Post by dep_b »

reilly3000 wrote: post #803

This is really in response to the irresponsible use of APIs for trackers. Evercookie is a stunning example of how far it can go... From their repo: - Standard HTTP Cookies - Flash Local Shared Objects - Silverlight Isolated Storage - CSS History Knocking - Storing cookies in HTTP ETags (Backend server required) - Storing cookies in Web cache (Backend server required) - HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Pinning (w…

You could permissionwall that stuff, just like iOS asks for permissions to ask your location. If a random website wants to mess with Local Storage I know that I need to turn around.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#855

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

burtonator wrote: post #543

I ported Polar ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) over to a PWA about a year ago. It's kind of a nightmare due to both Google and Apple messing things up. PWAs could be an amazing platform but both companies are really messing it up. Apple is trying to kill them by giving plausible explanations as to why they can't have PWAs. Security this, blah blah blah. There's no reason they can't have PWAs work well in Safari other th…

> Consumers are another problem. They have no understanding of PWAs...

Really? You're blaming your customers for not being sufficiently tech savvy and not wanting what you're providing?

Personally, I am happy with Apple's decision here.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#856

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #799
xvector wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it is completely unacceptable to have a persistent permanent non-expiring store in the browser. The potential for abuse is too high.

Then why are first-party cookies okay? FTA: > It is not the intention of Intelligent Tracking Prevention to delete website data for first parties in web applications.

Unexpiring cookies shouldn't be okay either.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#857

Post by thehappypm »

duxup wrote: post #387
thehappypm wrote: post #377

Maybe I'm being cynical here -- I'm not a web developer but have lots of experiencing managing web-based products -- but if you want to have state you should store it in the cloud, because local devices are volatile. Xbox Live, for example, uses a fairly simple service for cloud saves for games; local saves still happen but any developer has the option to push saves to the cloud. The author definitely raises good poi…

The problem is (at least for me) offline apps, or for customers who have poor or intermittent / unpredictable internet access. They threw LocalStorage and etc out with the bathwater that are cookies.

Rightfully so. We won't have a cookieless world if the entire tracking industry basically just switches to LocalStorage when cookies finally die. Enough whack-a-mole.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#858

Post by jdauriemma »

Twisell wrote: post #781
jdauriemma wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some fantastic PWAs out there. Twitter is the one I use most regularly. I think one of the reasons we see a lot of less-polished PWAs is that the idea of the PWA appeals to businesses at certain stages. Larger shops can afford to ship native binaries to more than one platform, but a smaller operation can't. PWAs are presumably tempting to those types of product teams: you get multi-platform reach while trul…

Is Twitter really a PWA or just a nicely done responsive website? At this point the boundary is a unclear. Beside Twitter rely on server side storage and pretty much only store session token in the PWA "local storage" (largely speaking). And as a user I rather installed iOS native App to keep finer grained control on permissions. (I also use multi accounts not sure the PWA Handel that?)

It is absolutely a PWA, and an excellent one at that. You can add it to your home screen on the desktop and mobile platforms that support it; they have all the trappings of a native application including notifications support, background refresh, etc.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#859

Post by jdauriemma »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #780
jdauriemma wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some fantastic PWAs out there. Twitter is the one I use most regularly. I think one of the reasons we see a lot of less-polished PWAs is that the idea of the PWA appeals to businesses at certain stages. Larger shops can afford to ship native binaries to more than one platform, but a smaller operation can't. PWAs are presumably tempting to those types of product teams: you get multi-platform reach while trul…

Writing for the web and trying to be consistent with native UI is a nightmare. It is not about MVP-stage or not, it is simply not worth it.

There's no rule that says that an app UI must be consistent with native app conventions.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#860

Post by jdauriemma »

dmitriid wrote: post #802
jdauriemma wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some fantastic PWAs out there. Twitter is the one I use most regularly. I think one of the reasons we see a lot of less-polished PWAs is that the idea of the PWA appeals to businesses at certain stages. Larger shops can afford to ship native binaries to more than one platform, but a smaller operation can't. PWAs are presumably tempting to those types of product teams: you get multi-platform reach while trul…

Twitter's "PWA" is crap. It has an unending stream of glaring UX/UI errors that only get worse over time. I'm just gonna link to a small subset of failures we've documented: https://www.google.se/search?q=twitter+site:grumpy.website

Why enclose PWA in quotes? Just curious. I use Twitter's PWA weekly on more than one platform and it works great for me, but that's just one person's opinion. I prefer it over their native clients for a lot of reasons, but the main value-add is that I don't have to give Twitter access to detailed information about my system while still using a full-featured, first-party client.
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